Wow. That was truly brutal and truly gorgeous all at once. It's incredible how many interesting things can be done with a camera when plot and narrative take a back seat and visual storytelling is allowed to run amok. Image Eraserhead, the poetic nightmarishness of Metropolis, the cringe-inducing scenes from the NIN Broken videos, and Cronenberg at his most daring, all wrapped up into 67 frantic m... read more
Description:Somewhere between nightmare and a techno-fetishist's ultimate fantasy, this extraordinary film from Shinya Tsukamoto caused a sensation when it was first released, and spawned a companion piece, Tetsuo II: The Body Hammer. Concerning itself with a young man's gradual mutation into a metal-being, the film takes a surreal journey into aSomewhere between nightmare and a techno-fetishist's ultimate fantasy, this extraordinary film from Shinya Tsukamoto caused a sensation when it was first released, and spawned a companion piece, Tetsuo II: The Body Hammer. Concerning itself with a young man's gradual mutation into a metal-being, the film takes a surreal journey into a dark and disturbing world where D.I.Y. body transformations and post-human women with deadly robot arms form the fabric of a strange new reality. Likened to the work of Lynch and Cronenberg, Tetsuo molds explosive violence, bizarre sexual imagery and jet-black humor into a cinematic experience like you've never seen before.
Shinya Tsukamoto draws on the marriage of flesh and technology that inspires so much of David Cronenberg's work and then twists it into a manga-influenced cyberpunk vision. A man (Tomoroh Taguchi) awakens from a nightmare in which his body is helplessly fusing with the metal objects around him, only to find it happening to him in real life... or is it? Haunted by memories of a hit and run (eerily prophetic of Cronenberg's Crash), the man knows this ordeal could be a dream, a fantastic form of divine retribution, or perhaps technological mutation born of guilt and rage. Shot in bracing black and white on a small budget, Tsukamoto puts a demented conceptual twist on good old-fashioned stop-motion effects and simple wire work, giving his film the surreal quality of a waking dream with a psychosexual edge (resulting in the film's most disturbing scene). The story ultimately takes on an abstract quality enhanced by the grungy look and increasingly wild images as they take to the streets in a mad chase of technological speed demons. This first entry in his self-titled "Regular Sized Monster Series" is followed by a full-color sequel, Tetsuo II: The Body Hammer, which trades the muddy experimental atmosphere for a big-budget sheen but can't top the cybershock to the system this movie packs. --Sean Axmaker
“Wow. That was truly brutal and truly gorgeous all at once. It's incredible how many interesting things can be done with a camera when plot and narrative take a back seat and visual storytelling is allowed to run amok. Image Eraserhead, the poetic nightmarishness of Metropolis, the cringe-inducing scenes from the NIN Broken videos, and Cronenberg at his most daring, all wrapped up into 67 frantic minutes. If you aren't familiar with any of these comparisons, well...where does one begin? Without giving too much away, (much of the narrative is presented non-linearly anyhow), the essential story involves a young man who has a fetish for inserting metal into his skin. Having inserted a metal rod in his leg (you won't need to use your imagination), he sprints down the street only to be hit by a ” read more
Azathoth added this to a list 6 years, 5 months ago
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